Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a strong attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), alleging large-scale vote rigging in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Karnataka and calling the electoral process “choreographed.”
Presenting what he described as internal research conducted by the Congress, Gandhi claimed that 1,00,250 votes were fraudulently cast in the Mahadevapura seat—an anomaly that, according to him, cost the party the election.
“Total votes polled in the Lok Sabha were 6.26 lakh. The BJP won with 6,58,915 votes—a margin of 32,707. But in Mahadevapura, where Congress got 1,15,586 and BJP got 2,29,632, the numbers just didn’t add up,” said Gandhi, explaining that the party’s internal data suggested they would win 16 seats but ended up with only nine.
“We found five types of irregularities: duplicate voters, fake or invalid addresses, bulk voters listed at single addresses, invalid photos, and misuse of Form 6, which is meant for adding new voters,” he alleged.
Rahul further stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to be untouched by anti-incumbency, unlike every other political party in a democracy. “Exit polls, opinion polls, and even our own internal surveys showed something else. But results in states like Haryana and Madhya Pradesh showed a massive swing in the BJP’s favour, raising serious questions,” he said.
He also pointed out suspicious trends in voter list additions in Maharashtra, claiming that more voters were added in the five months leading up to the polls than had been added in the previous five years. “More than one crore new voters appeared between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections,” he said.
These remarks come in the wake of the Election Commission’s recent statement that Gandhi has yet to respond to its June 12 letter. The letter had invited Gandhi for an interaction regarding his earlier claims of rigging in the Maharashtra Assembly elections—allegations he first raised in a June 7 newspaper article.
“Why hasn’t he responded if the claims were serious? Were his media statements baseless?” ECI sources questioned.
The Congress leader, however, maintained his stand, claiming that the party’s evidence of electoral manipulation is strong and requires immediate attention from the authorities.
